The Vision and
Objectives
Weaving the dailiness of our lives with analytical theories,
tears with our laughter,
blending our personal pain with our political vision;
searching deeper layers of knowledge in the subjective and objective;
we slowly learnt that our journey is not only about rights and empowerment of women,
even though it is of great significance and value.
We slowly learnt that in its vision and praxis
it is as important and essential to men as to women.
It is transformatory for all.
Corinne Kumar
Vimochana, meaning liberation, that was initiated in 1979 by women and men from within the CIEDS Collective, grew out of the intense need for a public forum that would stand for organised resistance to the increasing violence on women and would be assertive in challenging the all pervading apathy to the problems of women in the context of larger structures of violence and power. With personal is political as one of our cornerstones, while our specific concern was and is with the socially sanctioned personal forms of violence perpetrated on women as in dowry tortures, murders and other forms of marital violence, sexual harassment and rape of women, trafficking and commodification of women, our wider preoccupation is also with the larger growing violence in society today that we believe is also linked to violence within the home and the community. Therefore, our engagement also with the more public and political forms of violence stemming from ideologies like that of communalism, nationalism and militarisation which are leading to greater human insecurity and institutionalised intolerance; from the present model of globalisation based on a market and development fundamentalism that is the cause of galloping consumerism and the increasing impoverishment, displacement, devaluation and destruction of already vulnerable communities and cultures; and from the unchecked growth of an aggressively hyper masculine unipolar world order and a universalised way of life in which there is little space for the feminine, or for dissent and difference.
Towards the vision of making violence against women unthinkable and creating a violence free world for all, especially the more marginalised and vulnerable communities our objectives are:
- to strengthen women’s resistance to violence both within the home and within communities, cultures and politics- to make families, communities and the state responsible for and responsive to the
growing violence against women- to create alternative spaces and fora for public debate and dialogue to bring about attitudinal and institutional changes in our society vis a vis discriminatory attitudes towards women
- to make visible the deeper connections between increasing violence in the personal sphere of the home and the increasing brutalisation of the larger public polity
- to infuse into public and political life the feminine ethic of care and compassion and draw in all sections of society to strive towards a world free from all forms of war, violence, intolerance and conflicts
- to affirm women’s knowledges and wisdoms as also that of all marginalised and vulnerable communities silenced by the dominant politics of progress and developmentmore back home